Systems Programming with Zig
Zig is a language made for builders. It’s a new direction for systems programming that aims to combine the best ideas from the past with a sleek modern design. It will enable you to write reliable, maintainable code that relies on the bare minimum third-party dependencies and runs just about anywhere.
Zig's Big Ideas
Zig's Inheritance
It’s not a mistake that C has stuck around both culturally and as a potential language for new projects. Zig builds on some of C’s most beloved elements in a number of important ways:
- Syntax should not be a barrier to understanding. C’s depth through simplicity is one of its greatest strengths. Zig uses a minimalistic but familiar C-style syntax, with an even greater emphasis on legibility and eliminating implicit behavior.
- Your compiled binary should map closely to your code. C has been described as a "high-level assembly" for its clean translation to machine code, although this quality is diluted as hardware changes over time. Zig aims to emulate this property in the modern era of computation.
- The programmer should have the final say. C code has few guardrails. You are free to generate as many future hours of painful debugging as you wish, but if you learn to wield C’s power responsibly, you can also create ridiculously creative and blazingly fast code. Zig provides a wealth of safety features, but also gives you the power to turn off all of the checks when the situation demands.
Variables must never be more mutable than necessary. Zig variables can be declared as either const or var, where const variables cannot be re-assigned to a new value. If a const value is changed, it’s an error. If a var variable is never changed, it’s an error too. From the site of declaration, you know whether a variable can change.